Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Sequential & Consecutive

I walked back from the mailboxes yesterday afternoon with the woman from thirty-six. When you live in a complex like ours, you tend to identify yourself by unit number as it gives a point of reference. Thirty-six is up from me, which in reality is down one incline and heavily up another and - since it snowed - along a slippery slope. Thirty-six had a cane but certainly not to lean on. She was jauntily waving it around as she informed me that today was her 90th birthday. My immediate reaction was goodness girl, you certainly don't look 90 followed by what's your secret?

The complex is primarily made up of seniors. We are in the youngest 5% of residents which is rather nice. I certainly don't mind being that young lady in twelve! At fifty, I'm almost half this woman's age. That gives you something to think about - having forty more years of creativity to explore - and some motivation to stay in shape so you actually can.

It's been a week since setting my intention to do the work and to ask myself am I doing the work? Yes... and no. I'm intrigued to find that some work is sequential and some work is consecutive. Doing the work to me means cutting gluten, dairy, corn, and soy from my diet and at the same time doing the work to me means eating the groceries currently on hand before buying new ones in order to neither waste food nor money. Although they appear to be contrary, I'm happy to know that as I make the best choice available both bits of work are moving in the same direction toward a better me.

Apparently, it's a process of evaluation and even without checkpoints, there are checkpoints - like trying on three garments that were too tight for public consumption but whose purpose was - obviously - to remind me of why I'm changing my diet choices. By the end of last year, I was quite willfully ignoring my food sensitivities and now - as a result - I need to do the work. Gluten especially likes to sit around my waist. This is not good for sewing so... since I'm too fluffy for pants and skirts right now... I'm working on upper garments.

The grey cardigan above has been tickling at my brain since November 2010 when I took those pictures in the change room at Winners. Isn't it intriguing how long it takes some ideas to come into being? For over two years, I have been getting to this project but it wasn't until December when I bought a blue sweater knit and realized how perfectly it would go with the lace remnants of my birthday dress that I actually moved forward with the project. It took that long to match a pretty lace with a pretty sweater knit. YES YES!

I am using my T & T t-shirt pattern to develop the cardigan. The bottom will be the ribbed fabric started last week. Once I'd drafted the actual pattern pieces, there wasn't enough stitched fabric for what I needed so yesterday I ribbed another section for the lower front and a smaller one for cuffs on the sleeves. Originally, I'd intended to make the cuffs from lace but after sampling several different ways to finish the hem decided that without a scalloped edge, ribbed cuffs were a better choice. The sweater below from Anthropologie.com has a similar feel although the one I'm designing has longer ribbing from just above the waist to the hem at hip level.

badmomgoodmom wrote - Most people don't even think of it, but data curation is as important as physical decluttering. Although I am better than most, I leave room for improvement. Do you have any tips for how you stay on track? How you decide what to toss and what to keep?

Like you, I'm better than most. In fact, organization and efficiency are two of my strong points. Clutter drives me crazy but typically it's visual clutter. Digital clutter starts to get on my nerves when it's taking me far longer than it should to find what I want to find. The grey cardigan images were filed under Nov2010-greylace and for some reason would not come up with a search for grey or lace. This was the fourth time that I'd had trouble finding this picture and - for whatever reason - it was the click that started me sorting. Since I'm sorting back to June 2006, it's somewhat obvious that I haven't been on track BUT...

... this time before I used the picture, I renamed it and moved it to a folder called cardigans in the RTW folder in the Studio folder in the My Pictures folder. Also in that folder is one called Family. These are the two main picture folders. One is things to do with the studio and the other is things to do with the rest of my life. Inside each folder are as many folders and subfolders as needed. For example...

... in the Studio folder is a folder called Patterns and in it is a folder for each of the pattern lines such as Vogue or McCalls and in that folder are the covershots and technical drawings downloaded from the pattern sites. If I need an image of a pattern, it's in that area. Also under Studio is a folder for ready-to-wear (RTW) and in it are folders for cardigans, skirts, blouses, pants, jackets and so on. I'm currently working on sizing and re-organizing those images. This is an inspiration file. I determine what to keep by whether it is still inspiring me.

Previously I had a folder called Sewn and in it were folders by pattern company. That didn't work as well as I wanted so now the inside folders will be garment type like cardigan, skirts, blouses, and so on and the image name will contain the pattern number. With the project images, I am deleting any in process images that no longer make sense and keeping all the finished images including detail shots. If the process involves a technique that I might want to discuss again, I am moving those images to a technique file and labelling them by the technique and the steps. Although I've deleted a lot of images, there are still HUNDREDS... possibly thousands... still to go through. I have set up the main filing system and have started sorting the images. Once everything is where I want it, I'll work folder by folder re-assessing, renaming, and sizing the images so that when I get from A - Z I'm done. It'll take a while.

AND... all muslin shots are being deleted - VBG - for which my children will thank me when I'm gone. There's nothing quite like five million pictures of Mom in muslin. And there were darn near five million. I excel at muslins - apparently.

Errands this morning and then I'll work on the blue cardigan some more.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - The Blogger issue isn't resolved yet however I can insert photos by switching back and forth to the edit mode. Works for me.

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Myrna Giesbrecht

Welcome. I love to sew... and knit... and read... and talk... a lot... and I love learning especially about creativity and about life. Please feel free to comment. I love the conversation and if you need to, you can email me privately at myrna (at) myrnagiesbrecht (dot) com. If you're wondering what the header is all about, read this posting. Thanks for visiting. - Myrna

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